A friend couldn’t get over Speaker Pelosi’s amazing comment to Rachel Maddow:

Everybody has so much to gain from this, small businesses, as I said, seniors, young people, women, our economy. Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job….

We discussed how the reality would be the exact opposite of what Pelosi was saying, since under Obamacare a self-employed person would have to pay big bucks for his own medical insurance, and indeed would be required to buy medical insurance, and if he didn’t buy it he would be fined, and if he refused to pay the fine he could be sent to prison. I said that what Pelosi was really thinking of was not Obamacare but socialized medicine, where you don’t have to pay personally for health insurance but medical care is provided by the state.

Thus Pelosi’s remarks reveal her real thought process. Though Obamacare is not socialized medicine (in the sense of direct government subsidization of all health care costs), Pelosi sees it in that light, because that’s what she really believes in. She justifies Obamacare in her own mind and to other people by seeing it as socialized medicine. She doesn’t see the reality of what she’s actually passing. She lives in a gnostic fantasy world. And (as discussed here) when people who live in gnostic fantasy worlds gain political power, that is the beginning of totalitarianism.

Today John at Powerline had the same thought about Pelosi’s comments and socialized medicine:

I think this kind of dialogue is revealing. What Pelosi is describing is not Obamacare, but socialized medicine. That is the world in which the “artist” doesn’t have to worry about insurance; the state pays his bills. It is striking how often, when Democrats ostensibly argue for Obamacare, they quickly default to talking about socialized medicine—the destination on the road toward which Obamacare is only a waystation.

Also, my friend said that Pelosi’s comment gave the lie to the endless sob stories coming from Pelosi and other Democrats that we must have the health care bill to rescue people in terrible circumstance who can’t get basic care. It turns out that the bill is not about helping people in terrible circumstances, it’s about helping artists and photographers who want to live a freelance existence.